{"id":5300,"date":"2019-01-04T14:54:14","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T22:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=5300"},"modified":"2019-01-04T14:54:14","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T22:54:14","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-184","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2019\/01\/04\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-184","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 184"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On Fridays I share articles\/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.<\/p>\n

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n
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  1. The Moral Horror of America\u2019s Prisons<\/a> (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg): \u201c\u2026if you think America\u2019s current penal system is the very best we can do, that is about the most pessimistic verdict on this country I have ever heard. Has anyone ever suggested that the American prison system is the world\u2019s best? The can-do attitude is one of my favorite features of American life. We just need to apply it a little more broadly.\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. The Number 1 Reason For The Decline In Church Attendance\u2026<\/a> (Thom Ranier, Facts & Trends): \u201cStated simply, the number one reason for the decline in church attendance is that members attend with less frequency than they did just a few years ago. Allow me to explain. If the frequency of attendance changes, then attendance will respond accordingly. For example, if 200 members attend every week the average attendance is, obviously, 200. But if one-half of those members miss only one out of four weeks, the attendance drops to 175. Did you catch that? No members left the church. Everyone is still relatively active in the church. But attendance declined over 12 percent because half the members changed their attendance behavior slightly.\u201d<\/li>\n
  3. Biblical Archaeology\u2019s Top 10 Discoveries of 2018<\/a> (Gordon Govier, Christianity Today): \u201cThese discoveries, relatively insignificant individually, join with many other discoveries over the decades to give us a great deal of confidence in the historical details contained in the Bible.\u201d Note: these are precisely the sort of mundane, ongoing discoveries we would expect from a book describing real people doing real things in real places. I encourage you to contrast it with the texts of other religions.<\/li>\n
  4. Facts Are Not Self-Interpreting<\/a> (Twitter) \u2014 this is a short, soundless video. Recommended.<\/li>\n
  5. Evangelical Mega-donors Are Rethinking Money in Politics<\/a> (Emma Green, The Atlantic): \u201c\u2018What Christian philanthropists see now, maybe more than in past generations, is the full landscape of how they can deploy their [money] toward the entirety of what God cares about,\u2019 said Josh Kwan, who was recently appointed the head of the Gathering\u2014the organization\u2019s first new leader in its three-decade run.\u201d<\/li>\n
  6. Two Roads for the New French Right<\/a> (Mark Lilla, New York Review of Books): \u201cContinental conservatism going back to the nineteenth century has always rested on an organic conception of society. It sees Europe as a single Christian civilization composed of different nations with distinct languages and customs. These nations are composed of families, which are organisms, too, with differing but complementary roles and duties for mothers, fathers, and children. On this view, the fundamental task of society is to transmit knowledge, morality, and culture to future generations, perpetuating the life of the civilizational organism. It is not to serve an agglomeration of autonomous individuals bearing rights.\u201d